SOE President John Smedley said that the sequel to the MMO shooter Planetside will land in March 2011.

While getting the tour of the Sony Online Denver studio, I was able to snag John Smedley to chat for a few minutes on the state of the gaming industry. We talked about SOE's biggest competitor, Blizzard, and how other MMO companies react to what the WoW-maker does, as well as what can be learned from the demise of APB's Realtime Worlds. But when I asked him to confirm whether the titles that I'd been asked out to Denver to see, Magic The Gathering Tactics and DC Universe Online, were the only games in the pipeline for SOE, Smedley dropped a bomb. Not only is he heavily invested in social and casual games, but Smedley is super excited for Sony's return to the MMOFPS genre with the tentatively titled Planetside Next. Sony has hinted at a sequel with that working title before, but this is the first time that we've gotten wind of a release window.

"We have a very big launch coming in the month of March," Smedley said. "It's a big first person shooter franchise that we're really happy with."

I took a leap of logic and asked whether it was Planetside.

"Could be," Smedley said sheepishly. "We haven't technically announced it." He then told me that I could say that he "hinted" that the new Planetside was imminent, which translates to 99% of a confirmation. "This is the farthest I've gone [discussing it with the press] and the PR people are going to shoot me."

As for why it's called Planetside Next, it appears that Smedley might have learned something from his signature franchise. "We don't have the official name for it. Planetside Next is kind of the working title," Smedley said. "We've learned some lessons with Everquest II , not one of the better moves that we've ever made. We should have called it EverQuest Something. Having Everquest I and II sit on the shelves at the same time, in hindsight, was probably not the the brightest of moves."

That's because the two fantasy MMOs are separate products which both have their own servers and audience. That will be less of a problem with Planetside, due to the small number of people still playing the 7 year old game on its one remaining server. Does Smedley think that the update will bring in more players than the first one did? Well, it's safe to say that he is excited about it.

"[Planetside Next] is the coolest god-damned game," Smedley said. "I'm so in love with that game."

Despite its flaws and the fact it can be very frustrating, I absolutely love planetside, though I don't play it anymore. I hope this sequel has better gameplay and brings back the population the first game used to have. That would be bloody excellent.

I just let out an eek of joy, then subsequently slapped myself for eeking. But I'm Still soo dang exited for this. I had so many good times playing that game and stories of adventures and shennanigans that just thinking about it puts me in a good mood. It's the only MMO I have and ever will pay for.

OH MY GOD, I will sacrifice my first born for this, the first was glorious if not way ahead of this time (mmo fps didn't work too well when everyone had dial up). This just made my morning, hopefully they will have a beta that I can get into.

Well.. they have the exp with the MMO world to do it. They have god knows how many good examples of how to do shooter physics out there to draw from, I wouldnt say the name is "big" but it certainly does have a degree of allure for some. If its included with Station Access it may be a solid add and it certainly is a long time overdue to see the underrated franchise get a new sheen so it might compete with the modern world.

All those positives said... I absolutely positively will NEVER trust a single word out of Smedleys mouth. When I met him face to face I so wanted to knock his teeth down his throat for all of his evasion and doublespeak. Im not saying it wont be a great game, Im saying let me hear that come from ANYBODY else.

If anyone here isn't familiar with Planetside it had 3 factions rather than the typical two meaning that it's impossible for one side to dominate because the more land you take the more likely you're going to have a two front war. It's pure PvP and has a scope I've not seen in another FPS (366 people, 1 fight. There are multiple fights). There are large transport planes, Exo-suits, cloak suits, tanks, buggies, fighters, fuel trucks, mobile respawn points, bombers, Anti-Aircraft, and enough guns to put your eye out. The balance was close enough to work. The community really gelled over time. If you watched WAR's development you know that they wanted the motivation for city defense to be pride. Well they failed but Planetside succeed like you wouldn't believe. To this day the colors gold and blue make me irrationally angry and violent. In short: Planetside ruined my ability to enjoy other games.

As for population concern. I know that every guy who played the original and quit I've talked to said they couldn't wait for the sequel. And then proceeded to gripe about the game's mismanagement. Which I've personally toned down over the year or two since I stopped playing because I know that PS was an experiment more than anything else.

Yes, PlanetSide was way ahead of it's time. It's the only game to date, IMHO, that managed to successfully mimic the massive scope of a properly run military operation in the form of a game. The game's shortcomings included a shortage of interesting objectives, repetitive gameplay and limited selection of weapons. On the flipside, the game was technically competent (a first for SOE at the time), had fantastic music that I still hum-out to this day, and a neat scoring and XP system. Considering all the broken promises for MMOFPS games lately, here's hoping SOE finally gets it right.

But wasn't the guy who talked about it from Sony? Surely that implies console support...

Its SOE - Sony Online Entertainment. They're the PC MMO section of sony, in charge of Star Wars Galaxies, EverQuest, Planetside, Matrix Online... and whatever other MMOs they're in charge of these days.

If they were to make it available on consuls I'd imagine they'd have to seperate at least the PC games from PS3/360 if not seperate them from each other as well, and it would be a pretty groundbreaking move to have a MMO on consuls.

Wow, that was quite a while ago. So much was going on in my life when the first Planetside came out. I remember this was the game that drove me to buy a gaming pc, even though I never actually bought the game itself (I decided to play counterstrike instead). I'm looking forward to a sequel of this though. (hopefully with motion controls if it goes console)

The first couple of years of PlanetSide from 04-06 were some the best gaming experiences of my 28 years, having played many titles.

Then I watched them basically mismanage it into the ground and spewed forth buckets of bile on the forums for the next two years. I have lots of gray hair now (from all the angst) and a Vanu Sovereignty-ish tattoo. I loved it that much.

I bought the game over 4-5 times because my mouth kept getting me banned.